How To

So you’ve done your homework, assessed your resources, and decided that your nonprofit has the enthusiasm and talent to make a for-profit venture work.

As a nonprofit, you may know what it’s like to be under-appreciated so you may sympathize with LinkedIn. Everyone talks about their Facebook “likes,” and their Twitter followers but not so much about LinkedIn. It’s under-appreciated, too.

LinkedIn is a powerful and versatile social medium. Use its powerful search capability to find and research donors, board members, partners and staff. Then use your connections to make that all important introduction to the people you want to meet or LinkedIn’s InMail features.

Last week, I laid out the trends in philanthropy that are forcing foundations and nonprofits to change the way they do business: the economy; the ability and demand to measure impact; generational shifts; and increased emphasis on competition/collaboration.

by Farra Trompeter

As a nonprofit fundraiser, this is my favorite time of year. While others make vacation plans, I work with my colleagues to devise exciting integrated fundraising campaigns for nonprofit organizations. 

Study after study shows how most nonprofits see their biggest influx of donations—especially those that come in via email/web/social media—during the last few months, if not days, of the year.

Fellow Big Duck strategist, Rachel Hope Allison, and I have focused on developing online fundraising strategies and campaigns for more than 10 years. With that experience in hand, along with previous training in direct mail and telemarketing programs for nonprofits, we’ve developed a handy list of 12 ingredients for successful multi-channel or integrated fundraising campaigns.

What’s the secret to increasing revenues and increasing your workforce during hard times? Apparently, it’s having a great relationship with your employees.

In it’s effort to ramp up nonprofit participation in its services, LinkedIn now has a “Volunteer Experience & Causes” section for your profile page. The idea is that professionals will share information about what causes they care about and their level of engagement with those causes.

$23 billion. That’s the decline in giving from 2007 -- the peak giving year -- to 2010.

Nonprofit, know thyself!

Before bringing on new board members, this is especially important. The need for self-awareness is highlighted by the application process for Palindrome Advisors, a group of entrepreneurs who have pledged to lend their skills to nonprofit boards for at least a year.

If raising funds online is about technology, then raising funds through direct mail is about paper. Of course, neither is true. Online fundraising, like all forms of fundraising, is a way to form and nurture a relationship between your nonprofit and donors or prospective donors.